Friends, I always love preaching on the Feast of the Holy Family because I think the biblical message here is very surprising. We say the Bible is associated with family values, and indeed it is, but they're probably not the ones we would automatically think of. We see this in the two stories that the Church brings to our attention today: the story of Hannah leaving Samuel at the temple in Shiloh, and the story of Mary and Joseph finding Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

Friends, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we come to the Advent figure par excellence: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. What I want to do in this homily is to look at some of the Church’s classical titles of Mary. These are not simply pious exclamations, but rather very substantive insights into her role in bringing Christ to birth—both in history and in us today.

Friends, I always love preaching on the Feast of the Holy Family because I think the biblical message here is very surprising. We say the Bible is associated with family values, and indeed it is, but they're probably not the ones we would automatically think of. We see this in the two stories that the Church brings to our attention today: the story of Hannah leaving Samuel at the temple in Shiloh, and the story of Mary and Joseph finding Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete Sunday, I want to draw attention to our second reading, which is from St. Paul to the Philippians. These lines about joy, anxiety, prayer, and peace can run right through our minds, but they’re actually breathtaking, and they open up something at the very heart of the spiritual life.

Friends, in our readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, there is a lot of talk about building highways. In the Bible, both Old Testament and New, we find the theme of exile. Very often, Israel finds itself sent away from its own Promised Land, and a great hope is that one day, the exiles will return home on a highway that God has built. This is a symbol of spiritual exile—and to meet the highway that God has prepared, we have to do some preparation ourselves.

Friends, we come to the First Sunday of Advent, which is the commencement of the new liturgical year. “Adventus” in Latin means arrival or coming, and one way to look at Advent is to see three comings of Christ. There is the coming of Christ in history in Bethlehem, the coming of Christ now as he approaches our hearts, and the coming of Christ someday in the future. All three of these dimensions belong to our Advent preparation.

Friends, we come to the end of the liturgical year with the Feast of Christ the King, where we meditate upon the kingly reign or rule of Christ. Now, we in the modern liberal West have a hard time with kings; we like democratic polities. The United States emerged out of a great rebellion against the king. But we should get over this modern hang-up, because kingship—from Adam all the way up to Christ—is a basic biblical idea. And the importance of today’s feast is that it forces a decision about which king we follow.

Friends, we're coming toward the end of the liturgical year, and as is typical, the Church gives us readings of an apocalyptic nature dealing with the end times. “Apocalypse” means “unveiling,” and what’s being unveiled in our readings is the emergence of a new world—not so much in the literal, cosmic sense as in the sense of how we navigate and understand the world. Something has fallen apart; the old world has given way. 

Friends, our first reading is that wonderful story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, which is a kind of hidden gem in the Old Testament. Like so many of the stories in the Bible, it is very understated, but chock full of spiritual meaning. And it has to do with how we respond—and the strange and surprising ways God might respond to us— when things are toughest.

Friends, the readings for this Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time take us to very holy ground. In the first reading, taken from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, we hear the “shema,” a prayer fundamental to Jewish theology and spirituality. And in the Gospel, when one of the scribes asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment, the Son of God, the Torah made flesh, recites the same prayer. We can’t get any more sacred or any clearer indication of how we should govern our lives.